Morphosis and SOM were among the architecture firms involved in the design of a new permanent home for Cornell Tech university, described as "the first campus ever built for the digital age".
Photograph by Iwan Baan
The Cornell Tech campus, which opened last week, was constructed on a slender island in New York's East River, between the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens. The graduate school, which currently has 300 students, is a partnership between Cornell University, a private university based in Ithaca, New York, and Technion ? Israel Institute of Technology, a public university in Haifa, Israel.
Aiming to bolster New York's tech industry, Cornell Tech consists of not only students and faculty, but also tech entrepreneurs and business leaders. "Cornell Tech is the first campus ever built for the digital age, bringing together academia and industry to create pioneering leaders and transformational new research, products, companies and social ventures," said the university.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, or SOM, conceived the masterplan for the 12-acre (five-hectare) campus, which was built on city-owned land. The first phase of construction, which began in 2015 and completed this month, consists of three buildings, each designed by a different architect. James Corner Field Operations envisioned the landscaping.

The Bloomberg Center ? created by Morphosis, the Los Angeles studio founded by Pritzker Prize laureate Thom Mayne ? is billed as one of the ...